


boogie nights

by spqr



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Porn, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26032801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spqr/pseuds/spqr
Summary: “This isn’t nothing.” His eyebrows draw together. “Jaskier. What happened?”Jaskier fists his hands in his own hair and contemplates pulling it out. “I got shot.”“Shot,” Geralt echoes, in a tone Jaskier’s never heard before.“Only a bit,” Jaskier hedges. “I took some vicodin, it’s perfectly fine. I can hardly feel it.”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 60
Kudos: 1323





	boogie nights

**Author's Note:**

> The number of times i almost typed groucho marx...

\- J -

Jaskier doesn’t go to the club looking to get laid. While sex is not quite the _furthest_ thing from his mind (it is, after all, a strip club), he’s just spent the day getting verbally humiliated and fucked on camera, so he’s not really in a seductive mood.

But he’d been intrigued when a friend of his mentioned that the folks from Wolf Studios were scheduled to do a live show, so now here he is: standing in front of a raised stage with his mouth hanging open as he watches two of the hottest porn stars he’s ever seen jack each other off on a tacky velour chaise.

It’s not even that impressive of a set-up. Every once and a while, through the motion of their hands, there will be a _glimpse_ of cock, nothing more. But Jaskier supposes it’s the moderation that makes it. The _tease_. That, and their gorgeous fucking bodies. A mouth, open and panting, dragging along the stubbled line of a throat. A big hand sliding through a thick mat of chest hair. Powerful thighs, thrusting _forward_ , driving an uncut cock into the tight squelch of a fist…

Jaskier nearly swallows his tongue when the first man comes, his back arching on the chaise. And then the man takes a handful of his own spend and uses it to open up his partner’s arse, spreading him wide for the audience, and it’s so obscenely, egregiously gorgeous that Jaskier feels his abused cock twitch valiantly in response. The man with white hair fucks himself back on his partner’s fingers and forward into his partner’s hand, and for the first time in a long time Jaskier wishes he still watched porn instead of just acting in it, because _gods._

If this is what Wolf Studios produces, then it’s no wonder they’re the biggest thing since dollar-a-pop peep shows. Jaskier wonders if it’s possible that all the other stuff he’s heard about the company is true: that they’re a safe place to work, that their performers can pick who they partner with, that anyone can call the shoot at any time for any reason, with no blowback.

It sounds so good it’s almost like a fairy tale, which is why the first time Shani had extolled the studio’s manifold virtues he’d laughed in her face and told her she needed to stop believing the gossip she got from the woman who put makeup on her tits.

He considers making his way to the front of the crowd to ask the performers for the truth of it--if only as an excuse to talk to them--when he hears someone shout, “Julian!”

His blood runs cold. _Valdo Marx._

Fear seizes his heart in its cold, merciless fingers, and suddenly the strip club is the last place on earth he wants to be. He looks around for the exit, finds it well across the room from where he is--a familiar face in between here and there--and turns to go the other way. The crowd is dense and no one’s interested in moving out of his way; Jaskier nearly throws an elbow in his desperation, but then he’s diving into a back hallway, running full-tilt past the bathrooms…and coming to a dead end.

There’s no exit here, only two doors marked PRIVATE. Jaskier hears footsteps behind him, closing fast. He swears, picks a door, and stumbles inside.

He finds himself in what looks like a waiting room, with mood lighting and leather upholstery. Several sets of eyes swivel to look at him--all belonging to nearly identical shirtless twinks. Jaskier blinks once in surprise, and then a woman pokes her head out of the interior door and demands, “Are you Devin? You’re really fucking late, get in here.”

In lieu of something better to do, Jaskier gets in there.

He shuts the interior door behind him just as the door to the hall opens, so his heart is pounding when he turns back to face front. There are, in fact, two women: the annoyed one with bushels of curly black hair, and one with violet eyes who looks like she eats boys like him for breakfast.

“Sit,” says violet eyes, pointing to a chair.

Like he’s being puppeted, Jaskier sits.

“Your tardiness has been noted,” the terrifying woman continues. “I don’t know what third rate companies you worked with before, but you should know that we don’t tolerate this sort of unprofessionalism at Wolf Studios.”

“Wolf Studios?” Jaskier echoes. “Listen, I’m not--is this some sort of job interview?”

She looks at him like he’s an imbecile. “If you’re not going to take this seriously, then get out.”

“Sure,” he says. “Right, of course. If I could just hide in here for another--five minutes? ten?--that would be lovely. There’s a man in your waiting room who wants to kill me, and I’d rather not give him the chance.”

There’s a moment of shocked silence, and then violet eyes says, “Come again?”

Which is how Jaskier ends up explaining that he is not, in fact, Devin, but an off-duty performer, who took a wrong turn and just sort of rolled with it, and so here he is, babbling nervously and making the bemused acquaintance of--“Sorry, who are you?”

“Yennefer Vengerberg,” she says, and he might be imagining it but he thinks he can hear a hint of interest in her voices. “This is Triss, my executive assistant. I’m the President of Wolf Studios.”

“Ah,” he says, heart sinking. “Well, charmed. Truly. I wish we’d met under better circumstances--I’ve heard great things about your company, I’d love the opportunity to shoot with you.”

Yennefer taps her pen against her bottom lip, thinking. “ _Jaskier_. You know, I think I’ve seen your stuff. It’s mostly BDSM, isn’t it? Rape fantasy, gang bang, bondage.”

“Right,” Jaskier says.

“You’re a good actor. Very good.”

“Right,” Jaskier says again, and doesn’t bother mentioning that most of the time he’s not acting. Most of the time that is really _him_ on camera, crying and begging his scene partner to stop. Yennefer doesn’t need to know that. No one does. “Thank you. I take my work seriously.”

Yennefer seems to come to a decision. “Where are you contracted now?”

“I’m freelance, technically, but I do most of my work with Oxenfurt Pictures.”

She makes a noise Jaskier can’t interpret. “Listen, Jaskier. We’d have to screen test you, obviously, but I’ve been talking to you for all of--what? a minute?--and I can already tell you’re a better fit than every smooth-chested Peter Pan wannabe in that waiting room.”

Jaskier’s brain is scrambling to catch up with the conversation. “Sorry--are you offering me a job?”

“We don’t take freelancers. If you work for us, you work _only_ for us. You can quit at any time, of course, but that’s the long and short of it. We have to keep up our exclusivity.”

“Right.” Jaskier feels like he’s been saying that way too much lately. “Of course. I understand.”

“Good. So the only question is--do you want to work at Wolf Studios, Jaskier?”

_Does_ he. Jaskier thinks of the performers he just saw in the live show, how comfortable they’d looked, how at ease with each other. He supposes there’s a chance they were just really good actors, but some part of him knows that’s not right. That it was _them_ he was watching--really, honestly them. And maybe he’s just as guilty of drinking the Kool Aid as Shani, but compared to every other shoot he’s ever worked on, Wolf Studios sounds like a fucking utopia. If they give him an exclusive contract, if he can earn enough not to have to do a film at Oxenfurt ever again…

“Yes,” he says decisively. “I do.”

***

\- G -

When Yennefer had suggested that Geralt use his ridiculous seven-figure severance package from Blaviken Security to open a porn studio, he’d laughed for the first time since Renfri died. It wasn’t a long laugh, or a particularly good one, but it was a laugh.

And then Yen snapped, “I’m serious, Geralt,” and it wasn’t a laugh at all.

“Gods.” He was suddenly sober. The truth of it was on her face. “Fuck. You really are.”

He had known, in an abstract sort of sense, that Yennefer had seeded her personal fortune by starring in a series of four ridiculously popular dominatrix videos (known among fans as the Witch Bitch Tetralogy), but he had never seen them and never felt any particular need to ask about them. What he learned that night, over the course of a gruelling and at times mortifying audit of his personal finances, was that Yen had left the porn business as a matter of principle, and that she was plagued almost constantly by thoughts of the people she hadn’t been able to take with her.

And so, midwifed by three bottles of wine and wetnursed by prairie oysters, Wolf Studios was born.

The first thing they did was track down Triss, who had left the business when Yen did but hadn’t stayed in touch. She was halfway through a medical degree but agreed to come on at the company in a temporary capacity--which in the space of a year had become permanent. The women set about poaching performers. Geralt made the mistake one night of mentioning the sex tape he and Yen had made in college, and she put it on, and she and Triss shot significant looks at each other until he demanded, “ _What?”--_ and then he ended up as a performer, too.

He didn’t-- _doesn’t_ \--mind it as much as would’ve guessed he might. Most of the videos he does are with Eskel or Lambert. He’ll occasionally do one with a woman, but Yen’s got a real sense for not wasting his cock, and sales suggest it’s best spent in a guy-on-guy context.

Because Yen and Triss want Wolf Studios to be revolutionary, most of the films they do are geared towards women (though they do get a lot of gay men, as well). That is to say, they aren’t the violent misogynistic snuff films that take up most of the space on PornHub, that have never really turned Geralt on anyways. They’re a subscription service, and while a lot of their content gets pirated it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things--they have enough loyal customers.

Geralt knows that he’s fortunate to have never seen the darker side of the industry. He’s caught glimpses of it, worked with scene partners who were strangely skittish, had girls break down crying in his arms when he reminded them that they’d still get their full fee even if they asked to pause the shoot. It always makes him nauseous, but he takes strength in the fact that, no matter how useless he may feel, he can at least give all his performers a place where they can feel safe and supported.

He’s had to put a few men out on their asses, put his black ops history to good use, but word got out fast enough that Wolf Studios was not a place for the abusive bullshit that went down at other companies, so Geralt hasn’t had cause to bloody his knuckles in a while. He hasn’t wanted to in a while, either, not since that pub night when Lambert got pissed and wrapped his car around a tree. Even then, the shouting match they’d had in the hospital parking lot had been mostly about fear, not anger.

Anger, Geralt hasn’t felt in a long time.

But now, he watches the new guy--Jaskier--strip naked in the bright studio lights. He sees the raised lines of caning scars on the backs of Jaskier’s thighs, what looks like a healing burn under his right arm, and the mottled black map of fresh bruises that wraps around his ribcage, curls around the delicate line of his throat. And he feels fresh rage well up in his chest.

Not at Jaskier, but at whoever _did that_ , because he may have only met the man ten minutes ago, but no one deserves to be hurt like that, especially not during sex. He fights down the hottest wave of anger and tries to remind himself that some people like that sort of thing--he’s never gotten the whole BDSM thing, himself, but he doesn’t judge those who do. Maybe Jaskier wanted it.

_No,_ insists the voice in his mind. _No one wants to be hit so hard it leaves scars._

“Alright, boys,” says Yen, clapping her hands together. “Shall we start?”

It’s just a screen test. Yen likes to get close ups to see how a performer’s face looks during sex before she hires them. The other studios used to laugh at her for it, but she’s put forward such fantastic results that they’ve all shut up, and a few of them have even gone so far as to adopt the practice themselves. She usually just has the interviewee pair up with whoever’s around--as long as they’re okay with the selection--or asks them to get themselves off manually.

Today Geralt’s around.

Yen goes behind the camera.

Geralt and Jaskier settle down on the bed, which is bare except for a white bottom sheet. Geralt watches Jaskier carefully for any signs that he wants out--that he’s not okay--but he can’t find any.

The man smiles and holds out his hand. “I don’t think we’ve officially met.”

It’s ridiculous. They’re both naked. Geralt hears Yen snort behind the camera, but he folds Jaskier’s hand in his own and shakes it. “You’re Jaskier,” he says. “I’m Geralt.”

Jaskier’s smile becomes, if possible, even more radiant. “Me, Tarzan,” he teases.

“Hmm.” Geralt spreads his hand, so theirs are pressed palm-to-palm. Jaskier’s is much smaller than his. He sees Jaskier notice the same thing, sees his adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

“Gods, look at you,” Jaskier says wonderingly.

Geralt hardly has time to feel good about that before Jaskier laughs nervously and says, “Sorry. I’m usually not allowed to talk this much. Normally there’s much more--you know, ‘Take it, you dirty slut,’ and that sort of thing. I ought to have my face shoved down in the mattress by now.”

That tight coil of anger returns to Geralt’s chest. “Do you want your face shoved down?”

Jaskier searches his eyes, like he’s looking for the correct answer. “No. I’d--really rather not.”

“Good,” Geralt says. “Because I’m not the shoving type.”

Jaskier’s gazing at him like he just declared his undying love. Geralt’s surprised and perplexed to find he’s gazing back just as steadily, and he opens his mouth to say something--he doesn’t know what--but then Yen clears her throat from behind the camera and instructs, “May I remind you, this is a _porn studio_. So, if you wouldn’t mind _touching each other_.”

Geralt takes Jaskier’s face gently in his hands, fingertips tucked behind the hinge of his jaw, and kisses him. He gives Jaskier space to pull away, but he doesn’t--he makes a sharp, hungry noise against Geralt’s mouth and leans into it.

If Yen’s thrown by the change in the program, she doesn’t give any indication. Geralt hears the quiet whir of the camera’s lens as she zooms in on their hands, their faces, their half-hard cocks. It’s never been weird for him, having people watch, though he doesn’t think of himself as getting off on voyeurism--what they do has never been tacky or performative. Geralt’s just comfortable in his own skin, comfortable with nakedness, comfortable with sex.

Jaskier seems to be the same way. He tugs at Geralt’s hair, swings a leg over his lap, and straddles him. Geralt’s knees come up of their own accord, heels dragging over the sheet. He guides Jaskier’s hips around ever-so-slightly to give Yen the shot he can predict she’s going for: Geralt’s cock, filling to full hardness as it bumps between the cheeks of Jaskier’s arse.

They haven’t discussed actual fucking, so Geralt’s not going to do it, but _gods_ does he want to. The _noises_ Jaskier is making are enough to drive him mad on their own, but then there’s the happy curve of his lips, the precum he’s smearing all over Geralt’s abdomen…

Geralt rumbles and breaks away, moving to lave wet kisses down the side of Jaskier’s neck, over the knob of his shouder, across his chest. He runs his mouth over the burn under Jaskier’s arm, as careful as he’s ever been, and feels Jaskier’s hands come down on his back, looking for support. Geralt winds his arms as far around the smaller man’s waist as they’ll go, and holds him steady.

By the time he makes it back to a nipple, Jaskier’s swearing and rutting against his stomach. He takes the nipple between his teeth and tugs--gently, always gently--and gets a gorgeous, ragged groan in reply. His partner’s nails dig into the muscles of his upper back, and then Jaskier slides one hand back into his hair, gives it a pull, and pants, “Your fingers, Geralt-- _gods_ , I want your fingers.”

Something lands on the bed next to them. A packet of lube. Jaskier grabs it and rips it open with his teeth before Geralt can voice any of his hesitation, and he supposes that’s answer enough.

Jaskier finds Geralt’s hand and empties the entire packet into it, which is messy but certainly one way to do it. Geralt rubs his fingers together to warm them, pressing kisses to Jaskier’s shoulder, the side of his head, anywhere he can reach, but he must take too long because Jaskier makes an impatient sound in the back of his throar and whines, “Hurry up, I’m _dying_.”

“Brat,” Geralt huffs, but he’s smiling into Jaskier’s skin.

He presses one finger in, and then two, and then he finds Jaskier’s prostate and rubs it, and keeps rubbing it, and Jaskier makes a noise like he’s been blown open and buries his face against Geralt’s shoulder, breathing so hard he’s almost sobbing. He’s not even _trying_ to rut against Geralt’s stomach anymore--all his attention has gone to rolling his hips back onto his hand, like all he needs to get himself off are two of Geralt’s fingers, and it’s so disgustingly hot that Geralt’s sort of worried he’s going to embarrass himself.

“ _Jaskier.”_ He bites the lobe of Jaskier’s ear. “Gods, look at you.”

A moment later Jaskier’s lips are back on his, sticky-wet with saliva. It feels like he needs this--something beyond the fast, frantic motion of Geralt’s hand, some show of genuine emotion--and Geralt isn’t about to begrudge him a kiss, not considering where his hands are and especially not considering how every time Jaskier says his name, pleading, he feels like a tree that’s been split straight down the center by lightning.

“Come for me,” he says, when he has enough space to get the words out, close and humid between their faces. “Come for me, Jaskier, just for me.”

Jaskier cries out into his mouth, and comes. Geralt holds him through it.

Later, after the studio has closed up for the night and the halls are dark and silent, Geralt walks in on Yen and Triss watching the screen test. He just catches the end of Yen saying, “…nothing like his other work, I mean--” and Triss agreeing, “Leaps and bounds, honestly, you can tell--” before they both see him and the conversation cuts out.

He doesn’t ask them what they were talking about. He stands in the open door, sweat cooling on his bare chest, track pants sticking to his legs, heart still racing after the workout he just finished in the company gym, transfixed by the paused image of his own face. Jaskier’s back is to the camera for this shot, but he remembers clearly the moment--Jaskier was still shuddering through the aftershocks of his orgasm, face tucked in the crook of Geralt’s neck. Geralt had cradled the back of his skull in one hand, the other buried inside him, and had felt, stronger than ever, the drive to _protect_.

In the hours since Jaskier left, he’s tried to write it off as a side-effect of really good sex—really, _extremely_ good sex, in an industry built on the stuff. But he can see it now, clear as day. That look in his eyes--that’s not about sex. It’s something much more dangerous.

***

\- J -

Conisseurs of a certain class of pornography--better identified as “snuff films”--will be familiar with a video entitled _I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams_. There are two men in the video. One of them is retired porn actor Valdo Marx. The other has never been identified.

Jaskier’s never told anyone that it’s him in that video, though he suspects that some of the higher-ups at Oxenfurt were aware when they hired him. He hadn’t exactly had any other credits, apart from some stage acting back in high school, but they were practically falling all over themselves to put him in his first film. Not an hour after the interview they’d had him hogtied in front of the camera, choking on one man’s cock while another one fucked him without prep.

He met Shani in the “recovery room” after that first shoot. It was really just a room with couches and a mini-fridge full of Gatorade, but only bottoms were allowed in, so it was almost peaceful--except for how a girl was curled up in the corner crying almost too softly to be heard, and how Jaskier was leaking blood, among other things. Shani came in shortly after him with a huff and red handprints standing out stark on her pale skin. She took one look at Jaskier and adopted him.

Mostly, it wasn’t all that bad. Jaskier was never _obligated_ to go back to Oxenfurt, or XXX Productions, or any of the other studios he guest starred at. He needed the money; he had no way to get it other than to let men beat and fuck him on camera. After the caning, Shani taught him how to bully his employers into putting “no lasting marks” clauses in his contracts, and that was that.

Except Valdo Marx was waiting for him in the Oxenfurt parking lot one night, and said, “Don’t forget you fucking belong to me, you piece of shit.”

There would’ve been an encore performance of Jaskier’s breakout role if Shani hadn’t exited the building at that exact moment with a sock full of quarters and a thirst for blood.

They sped away from the scene as fast as her green VW Bug would take them.

Marx has come and gone. He’s stalked Jaskier for days without interruption and disappeared for months on end. But Jaskier’s never been able to put him out of his mind. It’s too dangerous to forget him, because the second you let your guard down is exactly when he’ll make his move.

Like now.

Jaskier’s been working at Wolf Studios for a month. He likes that he doesn’t go to bed in pain, doesn’t wake up afraid. His bank account is starting to look healthy enough that he’s considering starting singing again, really going for it--writing his own stuff and everything. He hasn’t gone digging in his freezer for an ice pack in ages, and he doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night with a compulsive need to turn on the lights in every room in his apartment, just to be sure.

He’s done a couple films with Lambert, who has a mean sense of humor that makes him laugh, and with Eskel, the other performer from the live show at the strip club, who’s nice and scorchingly hot and always goes slowly. Last week he even worked up the courage to call pause on a shoot, and asked Triss--who was directing--that he not ever be asked to do bondage. She looked surprised, probably because she’s seen his filmography, but agreed without question.

And he’s done films with Geralt. Shoots where the lights and the camera and the other people in the room all seem to dissolve, until all that’s left is Geralt: his eyes, his stubbly chin, the strength of his hands. He occupies more space in Jaskier’s mind than anyone ever has, even Valdo Marx, and every time Jaskier jerks off in the shower gasping Geralt’s name, every time he wakes in the night and reaches out instinctively for someone who isn’t there, he forgets a little bit more.

He forgets that his days are numbered. He forgets that Geralt is, apparently, a millionaire business owner, and all Jaskier will ever be is damaged goods.

He forgets to be careful when he’s picking Shani up from work.

At least he’s looking in the right direction at the time--he’s leaning against the hood of Shani’s Bug, having a smoke, and spots Marx coming at him a few cars away. He doesn’t spot the gun in his hand for a few more paces, though, and by that point it’s too late. All he can do is throw himself over the hood, cover his head with his hands and pray for the best.

All things considered, it works out pretty well. He goes home with a bullet hole in his leg, but still. It could be a hell of a lot worse.

Mostly what he remembers about the experience of getting shot is a very loud noise and a feeling like someone had dropped a bowling ball on his thigh. He also remembers laying on the pavement on the other side of the car, willing his body to get up, cursing it for not responding, watching Marx’s boots get closer and closer, absolutely sure he was about to die.

Then Shani came out of the building, pointed her own gun (huge and illegally purchased) at Marx, yelled a lot and poured Jaskier into her car. She’d taken them to his place. Jaskier had protested because there was a chance Marx knew where he lived and also Shani’s place was much nicer, but she told him in no uncertain terms to shut the fuck up because she wasn’t about to have him bleeding all over her bathroom when she’d just gotten the tiling re-done.

It was not, as it turned out, Shani’s first time dealing with a bullet wound. The fact that Jaskier didn’t have to explain everything to an ER doctor and then the police is a small mercy.

But now here he is, sitting in his tiny dressing room at Wolf Studios, slightly loopy on painkillers and trying to figure out how he can go out there and do a whole shoot with Geralt without anyone getting curious about the bloody bandage on his thigh.

He obviously can’t just tell them. There would be too many questions, and he’d have to come up with answers. Besides, Yennefer was very clear when they were going over their contract: barring emergency or “work-related emotional distress,” cancelling a shoot requires 24 hours’ notice.

They start in 20 minutes.

Jaskier really doesn’t want to lose his job. Here--with Geralt and Eskel and Lambert and even _Yen_ \--is the only place he’s felt safe in as long as he can remember. And he’s done a lot worse things for a lot worse reasons, so he’s going to go out there and wing it and do his level best not to limp.

“ _Jask_ ,” Istredd tisks when Jaskier lowers himself gingerly into the makeup chair. “Honestly, have you not slept for a week? You look like you’ve lost a pint of blood.”

Jaskier laughs and hopes it sounds natural. “You know me, mate. No rest for the wicked.”

Istredd just rolls his eyes heavenward and goes a little harder than usual on the foundation.

Jaskier leaves wardrobe in a pair of boxers that barely cover his bandage and a starched button-down in Geralt’s size, open in front. The premise for this video is something about Geralt being a rich businessman and Jaskier being a cheeky twink who steals his clothes.

He’s feeling optimistic about the whole thing--clothes kink just on the day he has to keep his clothes on, _brilliant_ \--when Lambert leers at him in the hall and says, “Rough night, Jask?”

Jaskier’s steps falter. “What?”

“You’re limping like you got fucked six ways to Sunday.”

“Oh.” Jaskier makes a concentrated effort to correct his gait as he passes Lambert and continues down the hall. “You caught me. Astute as always, my dear man.”

Lambert snickers and leaves him be, but the damage is done.

By the time Jaskier makes it to the set where they’re shooting--a bedroom set with green-screen windows that they’ve used as a “penthouse apartment” before--his heart is in his throat.

Everyone is going to know the moment they look at him. Yen is going to rip up his contract.

He’s going to be on his own again. Fair game.

Then he’s in the room, the lighting set to make it look like night time. Geralt turns to look at him where he’s standing next to the bed, fussing with his cufflinks--and gods, isn’t that a strange and glorious sight, Geralt in a three-piece suit. Jaskier is peripherally aware of Yen giving her crew quiet instructions behind the camera, and probably he should wait for her, but suddenly all the fear he’s been pushing down for the last eight hours catches up with him, and all he wants is to be in Geralt’s arms.

He’s there before he even decides to move. Geralt catches him, and takes his weight like it’s nothing when Jaskier clings and wraps his legs around his waist.

“Jaskier?” he asks, softly.

Jaskier only realizes his eyes are wet because he sees the dark spot on Geralt’s suit jacket when he blinks. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to think about it. He buries his face back in Geralt’s shoulder and says, “I missed you.”

It’s been two days since they’ve seen each other. Not even. But Geralt cradles Jaskier’s head in one hand, turns his face into Jaskier’s hair, and murmurs, “I missed you, too.”

Distantly, Jaskier’s aware of the cameras whirring to life, sound speeding, Yen’s sharp eyes on them. Then Geralt steps back and sits down on the edge of the bed, and none of it matters.

Jaskier was worried, when he came in here, about losing his job. But it’s not only his job he can’t lose--it’s this. It’s Geralt, who only touches him when the cameras are on.

Geralt, who is, right now, the entire world. All Jaskier can think about. All he can feel, all he can smell, all he can--he pulls back just far enough to claim Geralt’s mouth in a searing kiss--taste. Geralt makes a low, contented sound against his tongue, his big hands bunching up the loose cape of Jaskier’s unbuttoned shirt against his slim waist, and holds him close against his body. Jaskier slides his hands around the nape of Geralt’s neck and sinks all his weight into him, which is how he realizes that they’re both hard and that he wants nothing more than to be naked in Geralt’s lap while the other man is still fully-clothed.

He goes to shed his shirt, but Geralt catches it and pulls it back up. “Keep it,” he rumbles. “I like how you look in my clothes. Like you belong to me.”

Jaskier’s never been big on possessiveness in the bedroom, but the way Geralt’s looking at him--not like Jaskier is his to do with as he pleases, more like Jaskier is his to have and hold, come home to, _cherish_ \--it makes something golden and delighted bubble up in his chest.

“I do,” he tells Geralt, with complete honesty. “I do belong to you.”

Later, he’ll be able to fall back on that old lie: that he was just acting. That it wasn’t real.

Geralt makes a noise like he’s been stabbed and rolls him onto his back on the bed. With the larger man over top of him, Jaskier feels small and sheltered, and he’s hit with such a wave of not lust, but _affection_ , that he has to pull Geralt down into another kiss. Then he realizes that Geralt still has his fucking _shoes_ on and starts shoving at his suit jacket, desperate for skin. “Come on,” he whines. “Off, off.”

A low chuckle. “Patience is a virtue, Jask.”

“Fuck patience,” Jaskier says, but he sounds a bit dazed when he does, because Geralt’s stripping.

Geralt’s sitting back on his heels, peeling off his suit jacket, his vest--Jaskier’s clumsy fingers tugging at the buttons--and his tie. Somehow his shoes get kicked onto the floor, and then he’s in shirtsleeves and slacks, hair still pinned back neatly in an elegant bun. He bends down to lave a wet line of kisses down the center of Jaskier’s chest, across his stomach. His hot mouth wets the waistband of Jaskier’s boxers, and then the fabric over his cock, hands sliding up the backs of Jaskier’s thighs, under the legs of his boxers, going for his arse.

They freeze before they can get there.

Geralt’s head comes up. “Jaskier,” he says carefully. “What’s this?”

Jaskier feels him running his fingers over the bandage. He forgot. _Shit_.

“Shit,” he blurts. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

_Gods,_ like that’s going to work. He drops his head back against the mattress, cursing himself, while Geralt pushes his boxers up his leg, exposing the bandage. There’s a spot of blood where the wound is, stark red against the white, and Jaskier hallucinates that Geralt’s fingers are shaking when he places his hand on the side of Jaskier’s thigh, just below the wound.

“This isn’t nothing.” His eyebrows draw together. “Jaskier. What happened?”

Jaskier fists his hands in his own hair and contemplates pulling it out. “I got shot.”

“ _Shot,”_ Geralt echoes, in a tone Jaskier’s never heard before.

“Only a bit,” Jaskier hedges. “I took some vicodin, it’s perfectly fine. I can hardly feel it.”

Geralt’s hands tighten on his body. “Who did this?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“ _Jaskier_. Who did this?”

Jaskier’s suddenly painfully aware of all the cameras on him, and for the first time in a very long time he remembers what it had felt like the first time he watched _I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams_. The shaky nausea of knowing that he had been recorded in his most vulnerable moments, knowing that people he’d never met would replay it over and over and get off to grainy footage of Jaskier being brutalized. And none of it matters, all of a sudden--the job, Geralt, Marx.

All he knows is that he can’t go through that again. He can fuck on camera and cry on camera and fall in love on camera but he won’t let himself be torn apart on camera. Never again.

He shoves at Geralt’s shoulders. “Get off.”

“Jaskier--”

“Get _the fuck_ off me,” Jaskier snaps, and Geralt does.

Jaskier leaves the set barefoot and still in costume. He only stops in his dressing room for his keys and his phone, and then he’s outside and it’s winter, he didn’t really think this through, but he doesn’t care. He just threw away everything that matters to him in one fell swoop--he can handle a little frostbite. In the parking lot he sits with his head against the wheel of Shani’s Bug and breathes until his heart stops racing, at once praying that Geralt follows him out and knowing that he won’t.

He doesn’t. Jaskier fights the hot pressure of tears as he starts the car. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

He’s lost track of how many parts of himself he had to smother to survive Marx. His hopes, his dreams of being a musician, his pride. His desire for love, his belief that he was deserving of it. The idea of a future--any sort of future--and the habit of thinking long-term. He’s amputated so much of who _Jaskier_ used to be that he wonders when it stopped being medicine and became a sort of murder.

Well, this will just be one more act of self-murder, then: forgetting his last few weeks of happiness.

***

\- G -

Geralt’s not an idiot. He knows that Jaskier’s been through hell, because he pays attention to people who matter to him. For some reason, he’d just thought that it was a hell that was in the past, that Jaskier was safe from and moving past. He was wrong. He feels _negligent_.

Eskel had come to him one morning after a shoot with Jaskier--Geralt always made sure to be in the studio whenever someone was shooting with Jaskier, if not actually on set. Eskel pulled him into his dressing room and told Geralt that Yen had called the shoot early because Jaskier had gone completely limp when Eskel pressed his face into the mattress, but Jaskier hadn’t understood why they’d stopped and told Eskel, when pressed, that at Oxenfurt they didn’t even stop shooting if the bottom _passed out_. Geralt was hit with a wave of helpless anger so strong his vision actually went blurry.

He remembers the immediate aftermath of their first real shoot, when one of the PAs had showed up with water, wet wipes, and granola bars. Jaskier had looked so surprised and so touched that it broke Geralt’s heart just to see it--what the hell were they _doing_ at these other studios?

Yen told him that Jaskier had asked, a week in, when they were planning on having him do a BDSM video. She’d said it wasn’t really their thing, but told him if he wanted to do one they could probably work it out, and Jaskier had backtracked so fast-- _No, I really don’t…I like your way better_ \--that it made her think he hadn’t wanted to do any of those Oxenfurt videos in the first place. “What Oxenfurt videos?” Geralt asked in a low, dangerous voice. Yen gave him a box of tapes and vacated the premises.

When she came in the next morning there was a hole punched in her drywall, blood was drying on Geralt’s knuckles, and it was clear from the haggard, haunted look in his eyes that he hadn’t slept. Geralt had spent most of the night hunched in front of a TV screen, every muscle in his body clenched tight like a fist, trying not to vomit as he watched tape after tape of Jaskier sobbing, begging, gagged, hogtied, going limp under the pistoning hips of men who would be dead if Geralt ever saw them. One video of a man stepping on Jaskier’s head while he fucked him from behind broke Geralt completely--he’d felt something die inside of him, stood up, and took a walk around the deserted block.

“Was it like this for you?” he asked Yen, as morning sun winked through the windows.

“No,” she said. “Lucky for me, I’m not really the submissive type. But you should talk to Triss.”

He did talk to Triss, and she told him to take a seat and be quiet while she figured out how she wanted to answer him. After a few minutes, she sat down across from him. “A lot of it is acting,” she said. “Most of the people you see bottoming in those sorts of videos--let’s just say it’s gotten a lot better, in terms of how safe it is to film rape fantasy and make sure it’s still just _fantasy_. But I know what it looks like when someone is acting, and I know some girls who’ve shot with Oxenfurt…and I’m pretty sure those videos of Jaskier are real. They’re staged, but they’re real.”

All that, and still Geralt had thought--he’s safe now. I have him now.

Gods, but how wrong he’d been.

Geralt’s no stranger to bullet wounds, considering his previous profession, but seeing that bloody bandage around Jaskier’s pale thigh and hearing that he’d been shot _\--shot_ \--made him feel helpless and afraid in a way he never had before (except, maybe, cradling Renfri in his arms as she died). And then Jaskier refused to tell him who had hurt him, who Geralt needed to be protecting him from, and before Geralt could figure out how to respond Jaskier had shoved him off like he was afraid of him.

Too late, Yen had come up to him and said, “I think it was the cameras, Geralt.” Too late, he’d run out to the parking lot only to find that Jaskier was already gone.

So now he’s standing in the hall outside Jaskier’s apartment with Triss and her intimidating roller bag first aid kit, resolved to at least make sure Jaskier has his bullet wound seen to properly, even if he never wants anything to do with Geralt ever again. 

Jaskier answers the door in a pair of sleep pants and nothing else. He looks startled to see them. “Where’s Yen? I figured she’d be the one to hunt me down and fire me.”

“Fire you?” Geralt echoes, uncomprehending. “Why on earth would Yen fire you?”

Triss elbows past him, all business. “Drama later. Now--I hear you go shot. Either you let me take a look at it, or I’ll knock you out and drag you to the hospital.”

Jaskier pales. “No hospital.”

“Step aside, then, unless you’d like to do this in the hallway.”

Which is how Jaskier ends up laying on his couch as Triss shines a headlamp at the gaping hole in his leg and pokes around with a pair of tweezers. He doesn’t hiss, or wince, or protest when she cleans the wound out with hydrogen peroxide. He just lays back, mouth pressed into a thin white line, and takes it. Geralt hasn’t known Jaskier very long, but he knows how _wrong_ this all is--Jaskier’s silence, his sober expression, his resignation. He’s sunshine and easy jokes. Most of the time _laughs_ when he comes, for fuck’s sake. That man shouldn’t also be this man, stone-faced and accepting of pain. That man shouldn’t even know this man exists.

Triss starts talking to Jaskier about keeping the wound clean and monitoring it for signs of infection, and Geralt lets his eyes wander. It’s not a large apartment, but it feels well-loved, well-lived-in. There are prints of paintings on the walls, landscape art and graceful, renaissance nudes, interspersed with concert posters and what looks like sheet music held up by tacks. He thinks the thing under the sheet in the corner is a piano, but he can’t be sure. He _is_ sure that he spots a couple guitars, though, gathering dust on a rack in the hall, and wonders why he’s never heard Jaskier sing.

“Geralt,” Triss calls softly.

He turns back, and sees that she’s packed up and ready to go. Jaskier’s sitting up on the couch, head in his hands, not looking at either of them. Geralt swallows everything he wants to say and makes as if to go with Triss, out the door.

But then Jaskier says, “Can you--Geralt--” and breaks off with a sob.

Geralt gives Triss his car keys. She leaves, and shuts the door behind her.

Jaskier’s hands are shaking. Geralt sits on the coffee table in front of the couch and takes them carefully in his, pressing them together, holding them steady. “It’s alright,” he says, and he isn’t sure, specifically, what Jaskier needs comfort for, but it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, Geralt’s here. He’s not leaving. “It’s alright, Jask, I’ve got you.”

Jaskier makes a hurt sound. He doesn’t pull his hands away, but he doesn’t move any closer, either. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Gods, I’m sorry I ruined the shoot.”

It’s so ridiculous that Geralt feels like laughing. “The _shoot?”_

“Please, can you get Yen to give me another chance? I didn’t know what to do, with the bandages, and I--I can’t lose this job, Geralt. I can’t go back to Oxenfurt, I can’t--”

“You’re never going back to Oxenfurt,” Geralt assures him. “Never. I won’t let that happen.”

He can see Jaskier fighting tears, eyes red, breaths shuddering. He looks as determined not to let himself be relieved as he is determined not to break down. “I won’t have another episode like today, I promise. We can go back and shoot again tonight if you want--”

“Why?” Geralt searches his face. “Why would we shoot again tonight?”

Jaskier’s mouth opens and closes. “I don’t…the video was supposed to be done today.”

“I don’t care about the video.” Geralt can’t believe he has to spell this out. “Jaskier, you could never shoot another film and it wouldn’t change anything.”

He frowns. “What?”

“You don’t--” Geralt makes a quiet noise of frustration, angry with himself for not having the words. “You don’t have to do porn if you don’t want to. It won’t change anything.”

At first he’s worried that he’s said the wrong thing, but then he notices something amazing hapenning on Jaskier’s face. It’s like a wall is crumbling, defenses falling apart--like he’s watching Jaskier remember something he didn’t even know he’d forgotten, flickering expressively through a range of emotions: grief, fear, disbelief, denial, awe, desperation. He reaches forward, very briefly, to touch Geralt’s face, and then he’s up and off the couch, limping over to the window.

Geralt stands behind him. “Jaskier?”

“There’s a film from a few years ago,” Jaskier says abruptly, his back to Geralt. “Pretentious fucking title: _I Know Why the Caged Bird Screams_. Do you know it?”

Geralt goes very still. “I’ve heard about it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t…”

“I wanted to be a singer. All my life, I wanted to be a singer. I met Marx at an open mic night. He told me he’d bankroll my first studio album if I made a video with him. I didn’t think…I don’t know what I thought, but it certainly wasn’t that he was going to beat me within an inch of my life.”

Jaskier scrubs a hand over his face. Geralt feels as though a large and vital piece of him has been scooped out, but he doesn’t say anything. He lets Jaskier talk.

“I think I forgot how to do anything else,” Jaskier continues. “How to be anything else. Marx dragged me down into the mud, and now I’m fucking covered in it, and I’m not sure how to get clean again. I stopped believing that I could. It was a lot easier. And then Yennefer gives me a job, and everything is safe, and no one hurts me, and people stop when I ask them to stop, and--”

He breaks off, crying, and that’s it. Geralt can’t stay on the other side of the room anymore. He crosses to Jaskier in two long strides, then freezes, unsure of his welcome. “Jask?”

Jaskier grabs him and hauls him into a hug. Geralt wraps Jaskier up tight in his arms and lets him hide his face in his chest, breathing thickly as he tries to get a hold of himself. “I need you,” Jaskier gasps, muffled by Geralt’s shirt. “I need you, I can’t go back to being afraid all the time--”

“You have me.” Geralt kisses the top of his head, his temple, his snotty mouth. “There are no conditions, I promise. Whatever you decide to do--you have me.”

Jaskier seizes him by the back of the head, and kisses him in earnest.

Geralt lifts him and sets him on the kitchen counter, so they’re eye-to-eye, so he can press Jaskier to his front and feel their hearts beating against each other. Jaskier digs his heels into Geralt’s arse and presses them even closer, so that there’s scarcely a single atom in either of their bodies that isn’t touching. Geralt licks into Jaskier’s mouth, and feels how he opens for him--so, so beautifully--and feels a rush of affection and protectiveness that can hardly be written off as anything less than love.

“Bed,” Jaskier’s saying against his mouth, “Geralt, _bed_.”

Geralt lifts him off the counter and goes into the hall, through the door where Jaskier directs, where they tumble down on an unmade bed that smells of Jaskier and where, for the first time, there are no lights and no cameras and no one watching--no one here but Geralt, and the man he loves.

For the first time, there’s no impatient tugging, no whining that Jaskier needs Geralt naked _five minutes ago,_ his cock inside him _yesterday._ They spend long, liesurely minutes just kissing, legs tangled, Jaskier’s body sheltered under Geralt’s, the quiet insular peace of Jaskier’s home surrounding them.

And then they break apart, and Jaskier gazes up at him, tears still clinging to his eyelashes, and says, “I wasn’t lying, you know. When I said I belong to you. I’m a terrible actor.”

Geralt’s heart pounds in his chest. It feels impossible, that he’s been given this. That he nearly lost it. He can’t find the words to tell Jaskier what he wants to, but he runs his thumb under Jaskier’s eye as gently as he can, catching those last teardrops delicately on his thumbnail, and by the way Jaskier grabs tight to his wrists and _holds_ , he thinks that might say--almost, barely, not even sort of--enough.

He kisses his way down Jaskier’s bare chest, then peels him out of his pants, smiling at how Jaskier kicks a little, swearing, when the legs get caught around his feet.

One of the feet nearly catches him in the side. He grabs it out of the air, takes Jaskier’s ankle in his hand and kisses the inside of his calf. Jaskier goes tense and quiet when Geralt reaches the back of his thigh, where the caning scars are. “You don’t have to--” he says, but Geralt only hums and keeps at it, running his lips over the ropey scar tissue, sucking softly on the smooth skin between, until Jaskier is a puddle of limbs and pleasure, moaning with abandon, so hard that it looks painful.

They work together to shove Geralt’s pants down around his knees, and neither of them can bear to move away long enough to find lube, so they just rut together, Jaskier’s mouth snagged open against Geralt’s temple, Geralt’s face buried in the crook of Jaskier’s neck.

It’s awful, clumsy, lazy sex, but it’s the best sex Geralt’s ever had.

He hears Jaskier start making those short, sharp noises against his head that mean he’s going to come soon, and he rolls his hips down deeper into him. Jaskier’s knee trembles where it’s bent up against Geralt’s side. His fingers dig hard into Geralt’s back, on either side of his spine. Geralt moves his lips up to Jaskier’s ear, and rumbles, “Come for me. Just for me.”

“ _Geralt_ ,” Jaskier says, almost accusatory, and does.

Geralt follows him a moment later. He feels Jaskier tuck his face into his chest, holding him through it, murmuring sweet nothings, and the next thing he’s aware of, sprawled out next to Jaskier in bed, a mess drying between them, is Jaskier asking, “…stay?”

He rolls over and gathers Jaskier to his chest. “As long as you’ll have me.”

“Always, then,” Jaskier says, and there’s a note of teasing to his voice.

Geralt hums and agrees, “Always.”

If Jaskier cries himself to sleep in Geralt’s arms, Geralt’s kind enough not to mention it.

And if Geralt swims awake in the middle of the night and hears Jaskier singing softly and absentmindedly to himself in the bathroom--if he has to press his hands to his eyes and his chest to keep from breaking apart with the weight and furor of everything he can’t fix, if Jaskier comes back to find him like that and has to hold him and kiss him and tell him awful jokes until Geralt calms down enough to go back to sleep--well, Jaskier’s got things that he’s kind enough not to mention, as well.

Geralt wakes with the first light of dawn, Jaskier still snoring against his chest. There’s a puddle of drool on his shirt, and Jaskier’s come is a dry, sticky nightmare on his stomach, but Geralt doesn’t care. Jaskier is here, he’s safe, he’s smiling a little in his sleep.

There’s still the matter of tracking down and killing Valdo Marx, but, Geralt figures--that’s a job better left to Yen. His job is to be here when Jaskier wakes up. His job is to stay.


End file.
